Time is slippery, man. The past is real. Every moment and every instant. You can immerse yourself in the chilly waters of the past, swim in through those memories. Live in the story of the past and feel and smell and touch them. Try on the clothes of the past and they can be just as real as the jeans you’re wearing today. The future can be as real too asthe keys your fingers are hitting right now. The images, and thoughts you conjure up can be as real as the hot coffee spilled on your private parts when you were paying attention to the cute girl and not the table. The virtual reality of the mind is more real sometimes than the real world of this instant.

It’s a curious thing this passage of time, this entropic miasma of never ending churn.

Today I was reminded of how fast time can slip through your fingers when I got an email from someone I once loved and through a series of cascading thoughts was suddenly faced with how different I am than I used to be. How much change has happened to me in the past year and a half…and how little too.

I can remember that person that I was. I can live in that mind, remember every unexplored notion, every untrammeled fear coiling through my mind and I hate that pathetic worthless bastard that used to be me. Lots of times I even slip back into being that fool.

But it’s not everyday that I get reminded of such things.

Everyone says time zooms by. It’s a cliche. A worn down to the elbows having dug a giant hole in hard packed clay notion.

It is quite fucking true though.

I’ve taken about 4000 photos (those are just the ones I kept), I’ve met a bunch of people, encountered a few uninspiring women, worked on some movies, spent at least an hour a day learning about film making techniques if not 20 hours at a stretch, bicycled, traveled, and gotten to the point where I can do 100 sit-ups with ease.

[note: That's actually a huge milestone for me as I was a fat kid in high school and at age 14 thought it would be cool to take tae kwon doh! The teacher made 100 sit-ups a goal and that goal at that time seemed so unreachable that it was a kind of physical fitness Holy Grail. Even when I was bicycling 100 miles a day I couldn't get up the motivation to do sit-ups so now that I do them with weights behind my head I marvel at that.]

I can talk freely and easily with people about feelings, emotions, and whatnot that in the past used to cause my mind to wither and shrink and curl up into a solid ball of mental inertia.

I marveled at the change that has happened and the TIME that has passed. So much time.

Where did it go? Each moment is real and gone. Each memory is real and a wisp, a fragment, blown away.

You live in this moment right now and you ponder and choose and that is you. Yet what you did before defines what you’ll do in the future. This now that you are is not so much you as it is a pin hole projection of what you used to be spreading out into your future.

This is not profound nor especially interesting. It’s the stuff of late night alcohol induced philosophy.

It’s just a thing to wonder at like seeing a mountain and knowing that 100 million years ago it was sea floor. Like seeing a dead cow on the road and pondering that moment where life ceases to be life. Like seeing a one year old yell out “Daddy” with such joy it could burst your heart. Like watching a sunset explode into a billion hues of orange and blue and red and understanding why people see meaning and assume there must be “more”.

All those things are “time”. They are a perfect orgasm and a last moment of terror before the lights go out. Memories of everything and nothing forgotten soon enough and still…something lingering. A shadow of a moment that changed the universe in some way.

This fascinates me an I don’t know why. Probably just the pattern seeking madman that I used to be projected into a future where I can’t quite become religious and can’t quit feeling mystical notions as conscious thoughts. It is a bit maddening.

My future self will probably be muttering to myself on the side of the road. Covered in filth and demanding the voices stop screaming as the hover cars float on by.